


When Two Banes Cross Paths

by TheSevenSeas



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), DCU, Joker (2019)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Gen, Gotham City - Freeform, Hypothetical Scenario, Joker - Freeform, POV Joker (DCU), Questionable Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-05 04:27:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21207383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSevenSeas/pseuds/TheSevenSeas
Summary: Arthur meets a murderous clown in the train station. They walk into a train with three rich men who turn out to be astonishingly rude.Or:What if Heath Ledger’s Joker was in the Subway when Arthur was surrounded by the Wall Street guys?Inspired by this Reddit post and thread:https://www.reddit.com/r/joker/comments/dm7ix3/jokers_oc/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x





	When Two Banes Cross Paths

**Author's Note:**

> Just a fun story I made to go along with a reddit post I thought was cute (A picture of Heath Ledger's Joker sitting beside Arthur Fleck as the Wall Street guys look over) URL in description.

Arthur thought that he should be sad or indignant after being laid off, but he felt nothing. A hollowing emptiness overtook him and grinded at his remaining sanity. He tried to laugh the feeling away, ‘_just_ _the act of smiling makes you happier’ as they put it, _but it did nothing except hurt his chest. He considered ending it, as he had many times in the past, but once again he convinced himself that it wasn’t worth it, that he still had things he wanted to do.

Which is why he found himself standing in the empty train station. The train was late again. It would be pretty late by the time he got home. Arthur was cut off from his thoughts when footsteps echoed through the platform. He turned to see a man dressed in a mockery of a clown. Deranged green hair, black eye shadow, white face paint, and a painted red smile that was more bloodcurdling than friendly. The Clown stopped for a second, eyeing him, his lips twisting up in interest before walking up—way too close—to Arthur.

“Noww, what do we have heeere?” the Clown rasped in a sickeningly sweet voice.

Arthur stared into those piercing green eyes, and saw nothing but cold, menacing, sadistic insanity. He felt his blood go cold. He might not return home in one piece. He thought of the gun, hidden inside his vest. He thought of how he would...no, but he could—

But then the Clown took a step back, raising his hands, “Woah, woah, no need to make things so stiff between us.” Then he muttered under his breath, “...and I thought _I_ was crazy_.”_ Arthur raised an eyebrow, but before he could refute, the train came to a screeching halt behind him.

Arthur walked into the train, too aware of how the Clown trailed along behind him; he sat down, and the Clown plopped down next to him. Only under the faint light of the train did Arthur notice how well dressed the Clown was. The Clown wore a blue dress shirt topped by a bright green vest, a pair of crisp straight dress pants that hugged his hips, and brown dress shoes. Everything he wore was spotless, contrasting well with the absolute mess that was his head.

“So, I’m guessing you had a bad day,” the Clown said in an amused tone.

“More like a bad life,” Arthur muttered. At that, the Clown barked in laughter, turning a few heads their way.

“Geez, so sullen, what’s the point of that smile of yours if you don’t laugh with it?”

“I do,” Arthur said defensively, “my mother always tells me that the point of my life is to bring joy and laughter into the world.” The Clown burst into laughter again, but Arthur was distracted by the sight of three men surrounding a young lady.

It was at this moment that Arthur felt a familiar bubbling in his chest. And then he was laughing, laughing, even as his chest hurt and he struggled for breath. The Clown squinted at him for a moment, then shrugged and said “that’s the spirit”. He leaned back into his seat, laughed along for a while, then settled into a grin.

“Is something funny, asshole?” Arthur heard one of the men say, and he shook his head as he tried to explain. The men rounded on him, singing the lyrics of some song. A man pulled off his wig as he fumbled for his card in panic. One of the men snatched away his bag, and as he reached for it, he heard a familiar voice say,

“Ooooh, this is gonna be fun.”

A man kicked him. Someone punched him. His body screamed in pain as he crashed into the floor. They were beating him, _trampling him_, and it was all too much. He had to... He felt a bout of nausea as a man stepped on his stomach. In the corner of his eye he saw one of the men pull up the clown by the cleft of his shirt. Someone punched Arthur in the face—

“AAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”

A piercing scream echoed through the train.

The men turned. Arthur saw one of the men writhing on the floor with a dislocated knee cap, screaming again when the Clown stepped on it.

The two men rushed towards the Clown, who turned to meet Arthur’s gaze for a moment, and that’s when something in Arthur clicked.

He pulled out his gun, and with a BANG, one man dropped lifelessly to the ground. Someone screamed in terror. He heard footsteps running and soft laughing.

Arthur stepped through the pool of blood to look down on the man with a dislocated knee, who was pleading “please, please no, no, please.” _Helpless_. The man fell silent with another pull of the trigger. Blood sprayed onto Arthur’s body. He felt his heart thudding wildly as he looked over to the spot the Clown had been. It was empty.

Arthur scanned the enclosed space of the train, and found the Clown standing beside the door on the far corner, holding the last man by his chin.

“Now, that wasn’t very polite of you, to run off without a single word,” the Clown cooed, _affectionately_, into the man’s face. A pocketknife appeared in his hands and he pressed it on the man’s mouth, who whimpered pathetically. “Wanna know how I got these scars?” the Clown asked the man, and carried on despite the lack of response, “I grew up in a rough part of town, you see. Family dirt poor, mommy a drug addict, daddy who never came back after going out to buy cigarettes—all that stuff. Back then, I always cried when I was hungry, boo hoo hoo, I know,” the Clown chirped excitedly, waving his hands all over in animation and leaving cuts all across the man’s body in the process. ”And one day, I was looking through the trash for something to eat, and this fat guy in a suit didn’t like that I was rummaging through his trash. He thought it was disgusting that, you know, a dirty little boy was going through things he used to own. So I cried to him about how I was hungry. The guy laughed at me. I didn’t get what was so funny. Then, he put a knife in my mouth, and said ‘eat this, if you’re so hungry.’ And you know what, he was right. It was _hilarious_ when I put a knife down his throat. And now, as you can see, I’m always smiling.” The Clown threw his head back in a laugh as the man shook violently in fear. Arthur joined his laugh, and the Clown turned to him with a shit eating grin.

Arthur smiled back. The words formed on his tongue before he even thought through it, “my mother always tells me, that the point of my life is to bring joy and laughter into the world.” He said softly. The Clown erupted in another fit of malicious laughter, “now thaaat’s more like it,” he crooned, and tossed him the knife.

Arthur knelt down in front of the man with a friendly smile.

“Why so serious?” the Clown sneered beside him.

“Let’s put a smile on that face,” Arthur sneered along.

\--

When the man gurgled his last breath, Arthur heaved for a few moments, before dragging the Clown out of the train. They had to run. Or the police might come any moment—

A hand closed on his wrist and pulled with such force that he stumbled. The Clown was standing behind him, “What’s the hurry?”

_How could he not understand?_ “The police. They’ll find us if we don’t run.”

“Then let them.” _Oh right, the Clown was crazy. _

The Clown seemed to read his thoughts, and chuckled “by all means, you look just as crazy as I do.”

And he did. Arthur’s face was splattered with blood, his clothes soaked, while he held a gun in one hand. The Clown, on the other hand, had somehow made it out spotless. His expensive clothing was not even ruffled, and the pocketknife had disappeared out of plain sight.

The Clown starts walking, and Arthur follows behind him. They stroll down the street and through the battered buildings of Gotham’s slum. To Arthur’s amazement, the police never arrived. When he said as much, the Clown just laughed. “I told you. Gotham’s police are useless. So corrupt that even if they did find us, they’d fight over who had to come face the maniacs.”

Once again, Arthur felt this weird tickling sensation as he laughed, but in control this time. _Funny_. That’s what it was. He never quite understood humour, but now everything was funny. And it was a euphoric feeling, a wave of pleasure that drowned out the demons in his mind.

They talked through the night in self-invented phrases and cut off sentences that only the other could understand. The Clown shared stories and philosophies that put Arthur into wave after wave of laughter. They discussed anything that came up, agreeing on most and arguing about everything else until they reached a consensus. And Arthur told the Clown his own story: mother disabled, father unknown, dirt poor, discontinued medication, fired from job for having a gun. 

The Clown whistled. “Like I’ve always said—all it takes is one bad day.”

And Arthur agreed with him this time. Perhaps he was crazy, and ever since he pulled that trigger there was no going back. But why would he want to go back, when he could feel like _this_?

They were in a dark alleyway. The Clown had stopped with a thoughtful look. This gave Arthur a moment to think, and he realized that he hadn’t even asked what the Clown’s name was. Somewhere in their act together on the train, Arthur had dropped all his suspicions of the Clown; and even now, even with this realization, he still trusted the Clown irrationally. He could not read thoughts like the Clown seemed to be able, but he could sense his every line of motion, and they always moved and laughed together in unison. In this lunatic he had found, perhaps, the only person crazy enough to think like himself.

“By the way, who are you?” Arthur asked. He didn’t expect a truthful answer, just as he didn’t believe a word of the story the Clown had told on the train, but he needed a name by which to call him.

The Clown was silent for a while, for so long that Arthur thought he wouldn’t answer, but then the Clown answered abruptly “I don’t quite remember.” And looking into those cold green eyes, Arthur realized he might be telling the truth. It startled him to see the Clown—a man who thought the world a joke—say something so raw and honest. Arthur was at a loss for words, and they stood in silence together when an idea hit him.

“Who I was doesn’t matter much either, really,” Arthur begins slowly, “I thought that my life was a tragedy, but I’d much rather live it as a comedy, from this point forwards.” He looks for the last time into those eyes and he knows just what he is stepping into, but he doesn’t regret it. “There probably isn’t anyone else out there who shares our sense of humour,” he offers.

The Clown’s stare seems to pierce right through Arthur, and he stands with an unreadable expression as he considers the offer. His face twists into a smirk as he makes his decision. “We should teach them a thing or two, about how everything is really, a _joke_,” the Clown adds.

“There are two cards in a deck,” Arthur says.

“I call black,” the Joker replied.

“Then I’ll be red,” the other Joker said.

And their laughter echoed through the alleyway, scattering a few small critters and leading the police officers in their direction. A few muffled yelps are heard before everything goes silent again, and the police car remained forever deserted. 


End file.
